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5542. Net Oil Imports - As of January 29, 1999
- Publication Date:
- 01-1999
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- U.S. Economic Statistics Briefing Room
- Abstract:
- No abstract is available.
- Topic:
- Economics and Energy Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States
5543. Foreign Direct Investment in the United States: New Investment in 1998
- Author:
- Mahnaz Fahim-Nader
- Publication Date:
- 06-1999
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- U.S. Economic Statistics Briefing Room
- Abstract:
- Last year,outlays by foreign direct investors to acquire or establish businesses in the United States surged to $201.0 billion, 2 1/2 times the previous record of $79.9 billion set in 1996 and almost triple the 1997 level of $69.7 billion ( table 1 and chart 1). The 1998 outlays were boosted by two exceptionally large acquisitions, each of which significantly exceeded the size of any previous single investment. However, even without these two investments, outlays were still about 40 percent higher than those in 1996.
- Topic:
- Economics and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States
5544. Regional Patterns in the Location of Foreign-Owned U.S. Manufacturing Establishments
- Author:
- Dale P. Shannon and William J. Zeile
- Publication Date:
- 05-1999
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- U.S. Economic Statistics Briefing Room
- Abstract:
- A new data set on foreign–owned establishments supports an analysis of regional patterns of foreign direct investment in the United States (FDIUS) that uses comprehensive establishment data and is based on geographic areas that are defined on an economic basis rather than on a strictly political or administrative basis. A key feature of the data set is the separate identification of newly built, or “greenfield,” establishments. Greenfield establishments are of particular interest in the analysis of FDIUS because they indicate explicit locational choices by the foreign owners at the time of the investment.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States
5545. Thinking About the Future: Economic Aspects
- Author:
- Emilio Gerelli
- Publication Date:
- 11-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Union Studies Center
- Abstract:
- Building scenarios of the future has been defined "the art of thinking the unthinkable". And in fact the successful author of scenarios must be able to combine both an open and creative mind, and analytical capabilities to envisage different and sometimes counterintuitive combinations of actors, factors and trends. Our author is often also "heroic", since he knows that most probably he will be disproved by facts. However it is worth bravely accepting the challenge of uncertainty, since "illustrating the future by means of scenarios is a way to overcome human beings' resistance to change. Scenarios can thus open mental horizons to allow the individual to accept and understand change, and so be able to shape the world. Scenarios may help in seizing new opportunities ahead as well as avoiding undesirable effects of misconceived actions". In this connection a historian notes: "it is desirable, possible and even within certain limits necessary to forecast our future…However the process of forecasting must be based necessarily on the knowledge of the past".
- Topic:
- Economics, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States
5546. Growth, Poverty and Inequality in Latin America
- Author:
- William Smith and Roberto Korzeniewicz
- Publication Date:
- 05-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Latin American and Iberian Studies at Columbia University
- Abstract:
- The crystallization of the so-called “Washington Consensus” in the late 1980s sparked intense debates regarding the likely social impact of macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment. Academic critics and political opponents argued that Washingtonian reforms, and neoclassical economics more broadly, lacked a coherent theory of growth, and were bound to result in long-term negative trends in popular welfare and social inequality. Advocates of neoliberal restructuring, in contrast, while recognizing that market-oriented reforms could lead initially to a decline in output and standards of living, were confident that these reforms eventually would lead to sustainable growth and, as a consequence, greater equality and enhanced social welfare. A decade later we revisit this debate to evaluate recent trends in economic growth, poverty and inequality, and to assess accompanying shifts in the theoretical, policy, and political terrains.
- Topic:
- Development and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Washington, South America, Latin America, Central America, and Caribbean
5547. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World
- Author:
- Colin Kahl
- Publication Date:
- 04-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
- Abstract:
- Since the early 1990s, the National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States has identified civil strife in developing countries as an important threat to American interests and pointed to demographic and environmental pressures as potential sources of these conflicts. As the Clinton administration's 1996 NSS notes, “America's security imperatives... have fundamentally changed. The central security challenge of the past half century—the threat of communist expansion—is gone. The dangers we face today are more diverse... [L]arge-scale environmental degradation, exacerbated by rapid population growth, threatens to undermine political stability in many countries and regions.”President Clinton echoed these sentiments in a speech before the United Nations on June 26, 1997, declaring that efforts to preserve the planet's natural resources were “crucial not only for the quality of our individual environments and health, but also to maintain stability and peace within nations and among them.” Similar concerns have been voiced outside Washington. In 1991, for example, then NATO secretary general Manfred Worner argued that “[t]he immense conflict potential building up in the Third World, characterized by growing wealth differentials, an exploding demography, climate shifts and the prospect for environmental disaster, combined with the resource conflicts of the future, cannot be left out of our security calculations...”And, in an influential and particularly apocalyptic article entitled “The Coming Anarchy,” Robert Kaplan went so far as to suggest that the environment was “the national-security issue of the early twenty-first century. The political and strategic impact of surging population, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions... will be the core foreign-policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate...”
- Topic:
- Security, Economics, Environment, International Political Economy, and Third World
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, and Washington
5548. The Political Economy of Energy Taxes, OECD 1973-1995: The Role of Political Institutions, Public Opinion and Ideology (A Pre-Test)
- Author:
- Svetlana Valerie Morozova
- Publication Date:
- 02-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- The paper presents a theoretical cross-national study of energy taxation, concentrating on the heavy fuel oil tax. It theoretically investigates the effects that public opinion, institutional corporatism and left-wing ideology may have on the cross-national variance in manufacturing energy taxes, controlling for the plausible influence of budget deficits, energy import-dependency and deindustrialization. It is hypothesized that in more corporatist nations public opinion supportive of energy conservation, in combination with the Left-wing ideology of governing legislative coalition, will lead to higher energy taxes. Deindustrialization, proxied by the declining employment and output value in/of energy-intensive industries is believed to be responsible for a certain share of energy tax variance in the OECD countries. Finally, it is argued that energy import-dependency brings affects national manufacturing energy taxes.
- Topic:
- Economics, Energy Policy, Environment, and Politics
5549. Netanyahu's Economic Record
- Author:
- Eliyahu Kanovsky
- Publication Date:
- 05-1999
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
- Abstract:
- Blaming "the other guy" for current problems is a human frailty, but there are cases where there is substance to the allegation. I believe that the widespread criticism of Netanyahu's economic record lacks, at the very least, a sense of fairness and balance. On the economic front, the Netanyahu administration is faulted for the slow rate of economic growth since 1997, and, as a consequence, the rising rate of unemployment. The opposition contends that in 1996, Netanyahu inherited from the previous administration (Rabin-Peres) a thriving, prosperous, and stable economy, and then proceeded to "mess things up." What are the facts and figures? What is the larger picture?
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Middle East
5550. The Myth of Meritocracy? An Inquiry into the Social Origins of Britain's Business Leaders Since 1850
- Author:
- Tom Nicholas
- Publication Date:
- 01-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Abstract:
- Recent sociological analysis of the extent to which modern British society has become more meritocratic raises important conceptual issues for the recurrent economic history debate concerning the social mobility of Britain's business leaders. The majority view in this debate is that high social status backgrounds have predominated in the profiles of businessmen throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. François Crouzet's The First Industrialists reveals that Britain's industrial pioneers were drawn largely from the middle-and upper-classes, and that the image of the self-made man as the mainstay of the Industrial Revolution is a myth. Stanworth and Giddens identify a prevalence of 'elite self-recruitment' among deceased company chairmen active in large corporations and banks between 1900 and 1970. Scott's work on the upper classes distinguishes a 'core' business stratum characterised by kinship and privilege. Bringing together a range of research on the social origins of businessmen in the twentieth century, Jeremy asserts that 'it was rare for sons of the semi-skilled and unskilled to rise to national leadership in Britain'. The typical twentieth century business leader is upper-or upper middle-class by social origin, rising through the public schools and Oxbridge into the higher echelons of the business community.
- Topic:
- Economics, Industrial Policy, and Regional Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Britain and United Kingdom